July 2014

July 17, 2014

It is early and still. The old magnolia outside my window shimmers with fresh light. I love this time of day, so like early evening in a way. I think it's interesting how beginnings and endings share so much in common, a certain residue of feeling.

Houses that pass from one set of owners to another are like that. Over and over the boxes of one are packed and carried out the door as the new owners are dressing in another space, waiting, anticipating. My husband's father had a phrase which he repeated on certain occasions, usually in a time of change. It was, "All in good time; all in good time."

People move for all sorts of reasons. They need more space, change jobs, want to downsize, find their one and only dream house, end relationships, start new ones, have babies, get restless, see an opportunity for profit, someone dies. During the past thirty or so years I have helped people buy and sell homes for all those reasons.

I have always loved houses. I never tire of walking into them. There is a certain cadence of life thatinfuses the space we make our own, no matter for how long or how briefly. Before I became a real estate agent, I was an ordinary person who fell in love with one house and then another. One might think that I would grow immune to the allure after so many years of stepping into strange spaces, not my own. But I haven't. I guess that's why I still do this for a living.

We once lived in a small town in Georgia where the houses were known by the previous occupants. It took a generation or so to establish yourself. If you bought Miss Pearl Bailey Brown's house on the corner of Everett and Church, it would not be known as yours until a whole generation had died and maybe not even then. I still recall walking through Miss Gina Riley's house over on College Street. She had been gone from this earth for more than ten years but her house had been shuttered and the furniture left undisturbed for all that time until one morning I stepped into the front hall and caught a whiff of someone's long ago perfume. She'd been the town librarian, a single lady who lived a quiet life of routine, her days measured by walks to work, to church, to the store. I never actually knew her but her presence has remained with me, all these years hence because I once stepped into the space she'd called her home.

I am privileged to have this job which grants me access to the lives of so many in times of change. If you or anyone you might know needs a real estate agent to help in buying or selling a home, please let me know. I'd be glad to help.